Blake: Giving Hope Through Education
Here at Blake we are passionate about doing everything within our power to help the millions of children worldwide who suffer lives of poverty, neglect and hardship.
We feel that if we are going to make a difference to a child’s opportunity for social mobility, providing access to a good education will have the biggest impact. As something that we believe is vital for every child, a good education is capable of expanding horizons, developing life skills and opening up a whole new vista of opportunities to those who, without this chance, would have little hope in life.
Making A Difference in The Gambia
At the beginning of 2020, the Blake team were pleased to fund and assemble 600 SchoolBags and collect over 600 pairs of shoes for underprivileged children in the Kombo East District in the Western Division of The Gambia.
With 70% of the population living below the U.N. poverty line, The Gambia is renowned for being one of the most deprived countries in the world. Their overall literacy rate is currently only a mere 55%. Gambian schools are in desperate need of essential learning equipment and many children are still being starved of a good education, so Blake were assured that our donations would meet a very real need.
Despite the safe arrival of these resources in the country over 10 months ago, the world was in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and only now have The Gambia’s covid-19 restrictions eased enough to allow any further action to take place!
And so, 10 long months of waiting in storage, we are thrilled to announce that these resources were finally distributed to their young recipients at the local Faraba Banta Lower Basic School last week!
The footage we received of the children’s reactions on receiving these supplies was truly heart-warming. Below is the message we received from one of the pupils:
“Thank you very much Blake Envelopes. We really appreciate the bags that you bring for us. The pupils of Faraba Banta Lower Basic School appreciate all the effort that you have done for us and we expect for you to continue helping us because we’ll be forever grateful to you. Thank you and may God bless you!”
After all the hard work and dedication which the Blake team as well as our partners at School in a Bag and Skoolz 4 Kids put into assembling and shipping the SchoolBags, not to mention the unexpected 10 month wait for lockdown restrictions to lift before the distribution could proceed, this in itself is all the response we could have wished for and more...
Here we have compiled just some of the footage together in a video for you, too, to see. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Blake are so happy to have given this chance to these lovely children, and are incredibly grateful for the support of the wonderful School in a Bag and Skoolz 4 kids charities who enabled us to bring this project to life.
We look forward to sharing more updates soon.
Stay posted!
